Actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is to play Mandrake The Magician in a new adaptation of the 30s comic…

Grimsby may not have gone down as well as actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen had hoped, but there’s a chance his first foray into comic book territory will fare better. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cohen’s set to produce and star in Mandrake The Magician, an adaptation of the 30s strip created by Lee Falk.

Mandrake’s director is said to be Etan Cohen, the Tropic Thunder writer who made his directorial debut with the flaccid Will Ferrell-Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard last year. The combination of the two Cohens suggests that we might be in for a tongue-in-cheek take on Mandrake, whose abilities include hypnosis, teleportation and invisibility.

This won’t be the first time Mandrake’s had a brush with the big screen, either. A 12-part serial came out in 1939, just a few short years after the comic strip emerged, and a TV movie starring Anthony Herrera emerged four decades later in 1979. For most readers of a cerain age, the most memorable incarnation of Mandrake came in the 80s animated series Defenders Of The Earth, which also featured The Phantom and Flash Gordon.